Mother’s Day is meant to give due honor to the woman who gave us birth and life. Though we often feel gratitude towards our mothers we may not demonstrate it often enough. Mother’s Day is celebrated to share those feelings with our mothers, to spend some time with them and make them feel special.
Great women like Julia Ward Howe and Anna Jarvis will always be revered for their contributions in bestowing dignity to women and motherhood and they are largely responsible for the creation of Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day is celebrated in May in dozens of countries worldwide, but ranges from February in Norway, to March in the Middle East, to November in Russia.
Mother’s Day is also a huge commercial success. Mother’s Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out in the United States. Americans will spend billions on flowers, pampering gifts, and greeting cards, not to mention about 7.8% of the U.S. jewelry industry’s annual revenue in 2008, with custom gifts like mother’s rings.
Here are some favorite Mother’s Day sentiments and quotations:
M – O – T – H – E – R
“M” is for the million things she gave me,
“O” means only that she’s growing old,
“T” is for the tears she shed to save me,
“H” is for her heart of purest gold;
“E” is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
“R” means right, and right she’ll always be,
Put them all together, they spell “MOTHER,”
A word that means the world to me.
Howard Johnson (c. 1915)
A mother understands what a child does not say.
Jewish Proverb
Youth fades; love droops, the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, physician and poet
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be –
I had a mother who read to me.
Strickland Gillilan
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Who ran to help me when I fell,
And would some pretty story tell,
Or kiss the place to make it well?
My Mother.
Ann Taylor
A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us;
when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our
sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us,
and endeavour by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness,
and cause peace to return to our hearts.
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
All I am or can be I owe to my angel Mother.
Abraham Lincoln, U.S. President
There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness … The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way.
Andrew Jackson, U.S. President
My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
George Washington, U.S. President